ABSTRACT
We took off our shoes and were led into a family’s home in the small town of Slovia, 30 kilometers outside of Pristina, the capital of Kosovo. The living room floor was covered with oriental carpets. We sat on the floor as the women of the family brought out tea, poured it into small glasses, and offered us slices of cake. During the past year, our colleagues from the Department of Neurology and Psychiatry at the University of Pristina had been visiting families in this agrarian village of 2,000 people to provide mental health support. I was with a group of U.S. mental health professionals being given our first introduction to Albanian Kosovar families and how they were coping with their recent war experiences. We visited the home of an extended family: children, women, and one elderly man lived together in the six-room house. The previous year, the family had witnessed the execution of five men and teenage boys by Serbian paramilitary forces.
